Manufacturing disk drives is a very competitive business. Companies that buy disk drives are demanding disk drives that are capable of storing data at ever higher densities. A read write head is used to read data from a disk and to write data to a disk. A slider is typically used to position the read write head over the appropriate location on a disk.
The density that data can be stored on and read from a disk is directly proportional to the height that the slider flies over the disk (also commonly known as “fly height”). For example, the closer that the slider can fly over a disk the more data that can be stored and read from the disk. However, the probability that a slider will come into contact with a disk increases as the fly height decreases. Contact between the slider and the disk can result in permanent damage to the disk. Therefore, there is an increased need to reduce the probability that the slider will come into contact with the disk.
The drawings referred to in this description should not be understood as being drawn to scale except if specifically noted.